New Manchester News

A Northern Powerhouse

In his December 2014 speech at Manchester’s Museum of Science & Industry Chancellor George Osborne promised support for the creation of a “Northern Powerhouse” in Manchester, with science central to this vision.

Absolutely right.

Manchester has along and proud history of scientific ingenuity, and we at New Manchester Walks are always keen to promote that on our tours. We haven’t finished finalising the next batch of powerhouse walks, dealing with science and industry yet, but in the meantime…
• Walks of the future…Alan Turing’s Manchester – the annual Turing birthday walk. Meet at the Manchester Museum, 12 noon. Provisional date, Sat 20 June 2015.

A New Place Like HOMEOn 21 May next year, the new Cornerhouse-cum-Library Theatre venue, HOME, is set to open in a huge, multi-purpose new complex on Whitworth Street West. So while we might mourn the abandoning of the much-loved Cornerhouse building on that exciting lively corner of Manchester and miss the theatre in the old Central Library basement, we will have a wonderful new space to play in, a few hundred yards down the road. (By the way, not heard much recently about that plan to rename Whitworth Street West “Anthony H Wilson Boulevard”).

Once HOME opens we intend to run regular music walks that start there (given that every face in the city will be hanging out inside), finishing at…see below.

The New FactoryThe abandoned Granada TV site in Campfield will be transformed over the next few years into a major new cultural centre, The Factory. The council is describing this as a “unique large scale, ultra-flexible arts space capable of transforming from a 2,200 seat theatre to an immersive artistic environment with a standing capacity of up to 5,000 and will be the permanent home to the Manchester International Festival.”

What a perfect name, given that Factory was the city’s greatest ever record label, founded by Tony Wilson in 1978 and named so to counteract the deindustrialisation of Manchester, and that Wilson worked on this site for Granada TV as one of its best known presenters.

We will be ending many of our music walks at this site with stories of Wilson and his legendary Granada TV music show, “So It Goes”.

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BOOK A TALK WITH MANCHESTER’S WITTIEST PUBLIC SPEAKER: ED GLINERT

If you don’t fancy a walk, book a talk. What a great idea for your social club, U3A group, Probus set, National Trust outfit, local history society; to book New Manchester Walks’ Ed Glinert to give an illustrated talk on one of a huge variety of subjects, especially on Peterloo what with the 200th anniversary in 2019, for which Glinert has already been booked by the Lit & Phil, Central Library, the Portico Library, Hale WI… He had 65 people at Central Library for the Town Hall Murals recently and about 150 at Knutsford Methodist Church for Marx & Engels in Manchester. Continue reading →